Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council not having investigated concerns of child abuse. We already investigated the substantive part of Mr X’s complaint. The more recent issue he raises did not cause him any injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr X ran a sports club, providing classes for children and young people. He complained the Council failed to investigate his allegations of child abuse as it did not involve the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). He says he has been defamed and harassed because the Council did not come to a conclusion about allegations against him, and he has suffered a loss of earnings. He wants the Council to properly investigate the matter and provide clarification.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
5. I considered our previous decision about the matter.

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My assessment

6. We considered a complaint from Mr X and issued our decision in May 2022. In this decision:
• We found Mr X had been able to raise concerns about the Council’s leisure contractor, and the Council had responded to his concerns;
• We considered how the contractor and the Council dealt with concerns that were raised about Mr X;
• We considered Mr X’s assertion he had been defamed and harassed, concluding that he had not suffered any direct consequence of allegations having been made about him.
7. We will not revisit decisions we have made previously, so I have focused my assessment only on the issue Mr X subsequently raised.
8. Mr X says it was brought to his attention in 2022 the Council should have involved its LADO when it considered concerns about the leisure contractor. The LADO is responsible for managing allegations against adults who work with children. Mr X says the Council declined to involve its LADO, and he therefore contacted them himself.
9. Mr X says the LADO refused to investigate the matter. The Council says the LADO concluded the concerns were unsubstantiated, and the matter was closed. It says Mr X was made aware of this by the leisure contractor.
10. Due to this, there is no evidence that Mr X has suffered any injustice, regardless of whether it was fault for the Council not to have involved its LADO earlier. Mr X has not been found to have left a child unsupervised, and this outcome would not have differed had the LADO considered the case sooner.
11. Mr X seeks clarity, and says the parents of the child in question should know whether their child was harmed. Mr X would not be a suitable representative to bring a complaint on behalf of the child, as he is not a person with parental responsibility for the child and may have a conflict of interests. It would have been open to the child’s parents to complain to us if they had wished to.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we have already considered the substantive matter, and the more recent issue he complains about did not cause him any injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman